The conflict in Kashmir has
unfolded into a tragedy of colossal human loss. In a place which has the
highest concentration of armed soldiers in the world, much more than in
Afghanistan or Iraq, almost 80,000 people have been reported to been killed
(even if you go by the local govt reports still the number is enormously in
thousands)and thousands still missing. In a place where tragedies have touched
almost everybody commoner, mourning’s have often been subject by the state and Indian
media to political convenience. Indian media and New Delhi have often
used and presented tragedies and human loss in Kashmir to suit their own
narratives, the ones which are blamed on the state arms conveniently forgotten
and muted for, while of ‘their own’ are outraged for. Such dichotomy between
‘their people’ and ‘our people’ draws clear lines in Kashmir, between the ones
that India cares for and the ones who become targets of its violence and enforced
silence.

The recent attack on a CRPF camp
in Srinagar where 5 soldiers were killed (along with two militants), was
followed by the killing of a civilian at EidGah in CRPF firing (which was seen
as a ‘revenge killing’). The loss of life in both places was deplorable, such a
precious waste of life, but the outcry from India was limited to the CRPF
jawans killed, no one seemed bothered about civilians. This indifference of
India towards civilian killings in Kashmir is not anything new. 24 year old
Tahir Ahmed Sofi, killed on 7th March in Baramulla at point blank
range by Indian army soldiers, found no outrage in India and neither were there
any calls for justice there. In the one month since the hanging of Afzal Guru,
more than 350 civilians have been inured and 5 civilians been killed in Kashmir,
but none of this was found news worthy or worth any outrage in the Indian
media. Sadly what seems to matter to the Indian state and the media is the place
of its own fatalities rather than any human loss. While the Indian parliament
debated at length the death of 5 CRPF jawans in the Srinagar attack, the same
outrage and concern was missing when 76 CRPF personnel were killed in April
2010 in a Naxal attack in Dantewada, nor was such outrage seen when in January
2013, bodies of CRPF Jawans (who were missing in action with Naxals) had been
cut open and bombs stuffed inside them. In June 2010, 26 CRPF personnel,
including an Assistant Commandant, were killed by Naxals in an ambush attack in
Chattisgarh yet such outrage was not seen. Should the value of life and outrage
for Indian soldiers in India not be uniform for those killed in Kashmir and
Naxal areas? Most importantly, should the condemnation of a human life lost (be
it of a soldier or a civilian) not be on the merits of humanity than on the
merits of ‘our people’ and ‘the place of incident’?

Expressing
outrage is human; making jingoism of outrage is sheer politics. And it is this
convenient jingoism that has taken over the Indian state and media. Outrage
should be for lives lost and not based on the political or geographic
affiliations of these lives.

In this information age, as tools
of access to knowledge become common, so do the tools used by powers to
manipulate the presentment of that knowledge. On
14th March India’s home Minister Sushil Kumar Shine stated in the Indian
Parliament that only 47 civilians were killed in the state during 2010
unrest. Clearly this was not a typographical error since the same numbers (and
speech) was repeated twice by him. Around 120 civilians (mostly kids) were killed
in the 2010 turmoil in Kashmir, the records of which are not only present with
media and state agencies but have also been mentioned in an earlier PIL filed
in the Jammu and Kashmir High Court seeking, filing of FIR in these cases. The
PIL also submitted that out of 117 persons killed in police and CRPF firing,
FIRs were lodged in only 37 cases and charge sheet produced only in only 7
cases. So why did the Indian Home minister provide wrong figures to the
Parliament? Was it a case of deliberate manipulation of numbers or sheer
indifference towards the killings of civilians in Kashmir, where 47 or 120
civilians killed in Kashmir made no difference for New Delhi?

Since in present times the
availability of information is not restricted by time and location, its flow
and reach is wide. And when governments fail to force denial of this information
to its citizens, they use the same tools of information dissemination for
manipulating of information and complicating narratives. When you cannot stop
the flow and availability of information, create conditions of uncertainty
where facts are compromised to suit political conveniences and then propagated
on a larger scale.When an information-disarray
is forced by the governments, whatever is propagated on loud media channels is
sold as truth. In the aftermath of the attack on CRPF in Srinagar, many Indian
channels went berserk reporting that the CRPF officials had been forced by the
state govt to abandon their weapons days before the attack, making them
vulnerable, cue that was also taken by political parties in New Delhi to whip
rhetoric. In fact many Indians on social media used old images of CRPF shooting
with slingshots, to prove their point of denial of arms to these soldiers. What
however they could not explain was the presence of loaded magazine pouches (and
guns hanging behind the shoulders) in these pictures. The claims of Indian media
channels about the lack of arms to these CRPF soldiers were later rebutted by
none other than IG of CRPF in Kashmir. While the jingoistic media goes
overboard in reporting non confirmed narratives, they conveniently ignore the facts
of conflict trauma forced on commoners in Kashmir. During the 2010 turmoil in
Kashmir, 45 youth permanently lost their eyesight (as per a study by the SHMS
Hospital in Srinagar) while during the current turmoil (post Afzal hanging) 12
cases of youth with eyesight loss have been reported. These youth will be
forced to a life of despondency, maimed by violent acts of state arms, yet for the
Indian state and the Indian media they represent, like other Kashmiri’s, the
‘other people’ hence the criminally convenient silence.

Fact is that the Indian media is
not only fast becoming a platform to alter truth when it comes to Kashmir, but
it also propagates a dangerous nationalistic theory, where all Kashmiris are
painted black for political convenience. The Pragash controversy on some
uncalled for FaceBook comments about a girls music band were not only blown out
of proportions by the Indian media, but it was also used a whip to castigate
Kashmir en masse. And the same media remained silent when IPTK and APDP in
December 2012 released a well documented report on ‘Alleged
Perpetrators – Stories of Impunity in Jammu and Kashmir’ documenting hundreds
of cases of human rights violations by state arms.

When the power of technology has
broken barriers for access to information and knowledge, the state and its
supporting actors have been misusing their powers to alter, cloak, manipulate
and misrepresent this information.In
conflicts such attempts of the state and media can be dangerous in not only
forcing people to shift to alternate sources but this also widens the trust
deficit between the two.When New Delhi
itself has been apathetic to the pain and agony of Kashmiris for decades, how
does it then expect Kashmiris to be pathetic to the pain of its representatives
in Kashmir? For its indifference and apathy, when even mourning or calls for
justice become subservient to political convenience in New Delhi, India has no
right to claim any moral ground in Kashmir. The human tragedies in Kashmir (both
in uniform & without) should have made India to introspect and make efforts
for a permanent political resolution rather than divide between ‘our people’
and ‘them Kashmiris’. By pretending to be an ostrich with its head in the sand,
India is only strengthening the walls between New Delhi and Kashmir which only seem
more impregnable.

19th March, 2013

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